“Hobbit” review

Thanks to my awesome full time employer, I got to see an ever-so-slightly advance copy of “The Hobbit” today. Plus I got a free glass of wine AND a free pizza AND a free peanut butter milkshake! Blogging retirement is AWESOME!

Anyway, here’s my very quick review: It was good!

Here’s my marginally longer review:

A little slow here and there, but it definitely held my interest. There are some fun set pieces with great fights, the portrayal of the Riddle Game is very good, and the story moves along well enough that I didn’t feel cheated like I thought I would when I heard they were stretching it into three movies.

Having said that, I always felt like part of the charm of the Hobbit was that it was a small story that didn’t bother us with all of the Big Goings On of the power players in Middle Earth. This version chucks a fair bit of that in favor of bringing in all the backstory with the battle against the Necromancer that Tolkien largely left out of the original narrative. I’m not sure I agree with that decision, but since it was made and this is the story Jackson chooses to tell, I do think he tells it well.

Worf:
Hey Jeff, a question: Did you watch it in 3D?If so, was it worth it?If not, why did you choose not to?

It was not in 3D nor was it in the new high-frame-rate version, just a regular old movie. It wasn’t a conscious choice, it’s just what the company paid for so that’s what I went to. BUT, that’s definitely what I prefer. I haven’t ever seen a 3D movie that I walked out of thinking “Wow, am I glad I saw that in 3D.”

Jeff Hebert: It was not in 3D nor was it in the new high-frame-rate version, just a regular old movie. It wasn’t a conscious choice, it’s just what the company paid for so that’s what I went to. BUT, that’s definitely what I prefer. I haven’t ever seen a 3D movie that I walked out of thinking “Wow, am I glad I saw that in 3D.”

Gotcha… I’ve been waiting to see it in 3D, but keep having this thought in the back of my head “If this 3D movie doesn’t do it for me it’ll be a loooong time before I go to another one”

Jeff Hebert: I haven’t ever seen a 3D movie that I walked out of thinking “Wow, am I glad I saw that in 3D.”

It’s never purely necessary, just a nice touch. It’s great for adding a little extra to an already-spectacualr film (like the IMAX 3D showing of “Tron: Legacy” that I went to with my folks). But it’s fun when it works.

Saw it last night, in normal 3D. It was…amazing. The film was fabulous all by itself, and the 3D wasn’t overdone (as is easy to do with big budget films like this). My only problem with it (and it’s not really a problem) wasthat in the initial “scenery fly around” I got a little dizzy, which is a first for me. Didn’t have any other issues with the rest of the film.

The fight against the necromancer/sauron, and the dark tone in general, is what Tolkein would have wanted. After he wrote TLOTR, he went back and re-editted The Hobbit several times to try and make it fit in better with the “darker” world of its sequels. The entire riddle contest with Gollum was rewritten after he decided in TLOTR that Gollum would both have a larger part in the story and be fairly evil. He continued rewritting/adding to his manuscript of The Hobbit up until he died, and his “corrections” were even included in later prints of TLOTR as an appendix to explain contradictions and theme changes between that series and the first book. I think Jackson did a good job of adapting the story the way I believe Tolkein himself would have. Not as a stand-alone, high-fantasy adventure tale, but as an important, serious part of a larger, darker story…